The tone system of Bangkok Hakka

Abstract

Hakka is one of the main dialect families of the Chinese language. Most Hakkas live in southern China, but some have historically immigrated to several countries in Southeast Asia, including Thailand. Although there are some reference works on the Hakka language, there has not yet been any acoustic study of Hakka tones. The acoustic study of tone is used for a clear comprehensive analysis of the tonal system. The purpose of this paper is to present an acoustic analysis of the tonal system of Hakka as spoken in Bangkok Thailand. Previous studies which have been based on auditory analyses (Pratoom: 1984, Jurairat: 2001, and Wandee: 2003) have identified only four tones in Hakka as spoken in Thailand. Furthermore, there were differences in the tone values described in these three studies. The results of acoustic analysis in this study show that there are six contrastive tones, viz. mid level, mid-low falling, mid falling, mid-high level, short mid falling, and short mid-high level in the Hakka language as spoken in Bangkok. Differences in the duration of live and dead syllables were found, with the former twice the duration of the latter. There are only two tone contours of level and falling. The differences between the start and end of FO on syllables distinguish between a falling tone and a level tone. In addition, there are two allotones produced through tone sandhi. The first one occurs on Tone 1 Mid Level; its contour changes from 133 to 1325 when it is followed by lower tones. The second allotone occurs on Tone 4 Mid-High Level; its contour changes from 144 to 153 when it is followed by another level tone. The acoustic measurement of Hakka tones provides a clearer and more comprehensive analysis of the Hakka tone system than the previous auditory descriptions.